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Kurdistan Regional Government
The Kurdistan Regional Government, also known as the KRG, is a self governing region of the United Islamic Republic primarily inhabited by the Kurdish people. The capital of the KRG is Kirkuk. History Formation of the Kurdistan Regional Government Iraqi Kurdistan first received limited self government as the Kurdistan Autonomous region comprising the governates of Dohuk, Irbil and Sulaymaniyah in 1970. Iran convertly armed the Kurds of Iraq as part of its regional power struggle with then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi Kurds suffered terribly during Iraqi reprisals especially during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s where Saddam's army bombed and gassed Kurdish communities they accused of collaborating with Iran. Saddam's Al-Anfal campaign constituted a systemic genocide against the Iraqi Kurdish population. The single worst atrocity of that campaign was the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja. After the comprehensive defeat of the Iraqi Army during the First Persian Gulf War in 1991, NATO imposed a no-fly zone over Iraqi Kurdistan allowing the region to function as a de facto independent country. The Kurdistan Regional Government generally cooperated with the Americans after the 2003 invasion of Iraq which toppled Saddam Hussein's government and led to the execution of the Iraqi dictator. Iraqi Kurdistan became an oasis of stability as the rest of Iraq descended into more than a decade of civil war and bloody rebellion against the American occupation. The War against ISIS See Full Article: War against ISIS After ISIS seized portions of eastern Syria and northern and western Iraq in 2013 and 2014, the Kurds initially bore the brunt of the war against the Islamic State. Kurdish forces seized Kirkuk after IS seized Mosul in June 2014 preventing the former city from also falling to the terrorist organization. Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani coordinated the ground war against IS between Iraqi regular forces and Shia militia commanded by the government in Baghdad and Kurdish peshmerga forces fighting in the north. The war against IS ironically placed regional rivals and sworn enemies the United States and Iran on the same side although neither Washington or Tehran would admit it. The U.S. Airforce conducted air strikes against IS in support of the Kurds preventing the fall of Irbil to the terrorist organization in August 2014 and helping the peshmerga slowly retake strategic territory in northern Iraq from the Islamic State. The Kurds suffered terrible atrocities at the hands of IS as they had from Saddam which also increased their resolve to fight. The peshmerga also collaborated with Iraqi Shia militia, Iraqi regular Army and Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces on the ground. This was particularly true in Diyala governate which had a mixed Arab-Kurdish population. However, Tehran was the overall architect of the ground war. The peshmerga helped the Iranians and Iraqi government forces retake Mosul from IS in August 2016 driving the Islamic State out of Iraq entirely shortly after the recapture of the strategic northern city. The Formation of the United Islamic Republic and the expansion of the Kurdistan Regional Government Category:Regions Category:Middle East